[E-rundbrief] Info 857 - Nuclear Gang Rides Again

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 857 - Saul Landau (USA): The Nuclear Gang Rides Again.

Bad Ischl, 25.8.2009

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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The Nuclear Gang Rides Again

By Saul Landau

Aug 23, 2009

A group of scientists, military officials and government bureaucrats
signed an informal pact with the Devil. The contract became public in
August 1945, when US bombers nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Since then, no other nation has used a nuclear weapon [Israel? the UK?
for sure the US still uses far and away the largest quantity of nuclear
weapons but it has some satellite company - Elana] , but thousands of
radiation-emitting tests have occurred and nuclear energy plants
mushroomed, with promises of cheap, safe, and clean power. Over the
decades, however, "the nuclear industry" has faced repeated cost
over-runs, and serious "accidents." Thousands died at the Chernobyl
power plant ( Ukraine ) and a near catastrophe occurred at the Three
Mile Island ( Pennsylvania ) facility. Air Force planes dropped H bombs
in the ocean off the Spanish coast and innumerable leaks, fires, and
"mishaps" occurred routinely at military and civilian nuclear installations.

In 1980, Jack Willis and I produced "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang"
for public television. Our documentary showed government officials and
nuclear mavens colluding to obfuscate their failure to keep their
"cheap, safe, and clean" promise. In 1977, Jacobs, a reporter (and
non-smoker) covered the nuclear issue since the 1950s. He developed lung
cancer, his doctors speculated, after he had inhaled a plutonium
particle while covering US government atomic tests. He also looked
skeptically at US claims of benign radiation levels near the Nevada test
site.

In a 1957 story, Jacobs reported his Geiger Counter jumping scale in a
"safe" area. In his story, (The Reporter) he revealed the lies told by
Atomic Energy Commission spokesmen about actual levels of radiation.
Jacobs had surreptitiously acquired from a Public Health office in Las
Vegas a classified document revealing AEC knowledge that so-called low
level radiation constituted serious health hazards. Indeed, from later
de-classified internal memos, Jacobs discovered the AEC had classified
the health report not to keep it from Soviet officials, who knew about
radiation's perils, but to keep the US public sedated, so people
wouldn't think about choosing between nuclear tests and getting cancer.

In 1977, Willis and I returned with Jacobs to the "down wind" area he
had investigated twenty years earlier. In southern Utah , Jacobs found
those he had previously interviewed were dead or had cancer. In St.
George , Utah , directly in line of the fall-out path from Nevada
nuclear tests, he found a near epidemic of cancer and a public that had
endured years of nuclear nervousness.

Before he died, he added up costs and liabilities: damage done by bombs
dropped on Japan , and too many thousands of civilians and US service
men who served as guinea pigs during the 1950s. The Pentagon, seeking to
test soldiers' responses to nuclear battlefield conditions, positioned
men near the blast, had them cover their eyes and then measured their
ability to fight. We interviewed Sergeant Bates, one of the GIs ordered
to "dig a trench and crawl in." The blast, he said, "threw me fifteen
feet into the air. It made all of us sick." In 1977, he had terminal cancer.

Hot hailstones pelted the "downwinder" civilians, accompanied by
bare-faced lies from the Atomic Energy Commission and agencies that
later replaced it, assuring them of the benign nature of the blasts'
radiation levels.

Death and disease, however, did not deter the gang - which included
major companies that made nuclear generating plants. Over the decades,
various facilities accumulated "hot waste" with a half life of thousands
of years, but without secure burial places. Nevadans don't want it in
their backyard ( Yucca Mountain ). Nor do Indians or poor African
nations. In 1995, Russian sailors poured a thousand tons of radioactive
liquid into the Sea of Japan .

The current energy crisis atmosphere seems to have induced amnesia about
past nuclear "mishaps." Nuclear lobbyists have even induced some Greens
to convince Obama officials to subsidize their energy plans. But,
reported Jim Snyder in The Hill, even the $18.5 billion the nuclear
industry will receive in government financing won't suffice to cover
unexpected costs of "the next generation of plants." The Nuclear Energy
Institute - euphemism for industry trade group - demands $20 billion
more in loan-guarantees "to kick-start the long-awaited industry
revival." ( June 21, 2009 )

Before funding the nuclear gang, Members of Congress should read from
the long list of accident reports. Here are two of many:

For two decades, from the 1950s on, "thousands of workers were
unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive metals at
the Department of Energy's Paducah Kentucky Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
Workers ...inhaled radioactive dust while processing the materials as
part of a government experiment to recycle used nuclear reactor fuel."
(Washington Post, August 22, 1999)

In July 2000, wildfires near the Hanford facility hit highly radioactive
waste disposal trenches, raising airborne plutonium radiation levels in
nearby cities to 1,000 above normal. (http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html)

In 64 years, those who promised to perfect nuclear power still plead -
over many dead bodies: "Give us time!"

Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His A BUSH AND BOTOX
WORLD was published by Counterpunch A/K. His films on dvd are available
from roundworldproductions at gmail.com

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3961


-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
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